ARCHIVE FOR The Writing Life

Here at Grub HQ, we're always talking about the novels keeping us up at night, the poems that call to us over our morning coffees, and those un-put-down-able memoirs you'll find us reading while walking through four lanes of traffic [Ed.'s note: all walk-reading is performed by Grub's trained extreme readers; do not try this at home]. Every month, we'll share our staff's latest literary obsessions to add to your own never-ending reading list.

Welcome to the October 2017 edition of "Writing Life Essentials," a monthly hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are at least one of the following: local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities

This month at The Dead Darlings office, we looked up, down and around for fresh ideas and inspiration.

Marvel

In Writing Awe, Julie Carrick Dalton explores the elements of evoking utter amazement in your reader. 

This short story by author and GrubStreet instructor Stacy Mattingly was originally published by EuropeNow Journal in an ongoing series of poetry and prose from "The Borders Project," a collaboration between the Sarajevo Writers’ Workshop and Atlanta’s Narrative Collective, groups to which she belongs. The original piece, and other series installments, can be found in the journal here. You can catch Stacy at Grub in her six-week course, Writing Fiction from Real Life, starting Thursday, October 26th. NYC folk will also find Stacy at the Bulgarian Consulate next Thursday, October 19th, reading from her recently completed novel Kata as part of ...

For a long time, whenever I would drop my older daughter off at a birthday party, she would cling to my leg and beg me to stay, promise me half her slice of cake if I promised not to leave.

Then one day I brought her to a classmate’s party and before I knew it she was off running around with her friends without even waving goodbye – and I just stood there, with a dull, nameless pang rooting around in my chest.